Flash Lamp Annealing vs Rapid Thermal and Furnace Annealing for Optimized Metal-Oxide-Silicon-Based Light-Emitting Diodes

Abstract

Conventional annealing processes such as furnace annealing ͑FA͒ and rapid thermal annealing ͑RTA͒ are compared to the more advanced technique of flash lamp annealing ͑FLA͒ regarding the electroluminescence ͑EL͒ efficiency, electrical stability, defect formation, and rare-earth nanocluster ͑RE-nc͒ creation in metal-oxide-silicon-based light-emitting diodes with Gd implanted SiO 2 layers. We observed strong correlation between the electroluminescence efficiency, the nanocluster size, and the annealing technique for Gd implanted oxides. The increase of the annealing temperature and time leads to an increase of the RE-nc size and decreases the EL efficiency. Therefore, short-pulse high-temperature annealing ͑FLA͒ has a large advantage over the different annealing techniques ͑FA and RTA͒ from the point of view of stable and efficient metal oxide semiconductor light emitters.Silicon dioxide is one of the most technologically important wide-gap optical materials. Especially in its amorphous form ͑a-SiO 2 ͒, it plays a crucial role in many of today's technologies, including medical applications, as the gate and passivation oxide layers in more than 90% of the all metal-oxide-semiconductor ͑MOS͒ devices. 1 Combining silicon-based electronic circuits with optoelectronic functionality is one of the key challenges for the future semiconductor technology. Light emitters based on rare-earth Er 3+ , Tm 3+ , Tb 3+ , and Ce 3+ doped Si-rich SiO 2 have been reported with emission in the infrared to blue-green spectral range. 2,3 Recently, a silicon-based efficient UV light emitter based on a SiO 2 :Gd MOS structure with a sharp emission peak at 316 nm from Gd 3+ ions was reported by Sun et al. 4 During processing, the excellent dielectric properties of amorphous silica are perturbed by ion implantation and as a consequence of ion-solid interaction various types of defects are created ͑oxygen deficient centers ODC, nonbridging oxygen hole centers NBOHC, EЈ-centers, etc.͒. Post-implantation annealing techniques are widely used to remove the damage induced by ion implantation and to activate the implanted centers both in amorphous and crystalline matrices. Nevertheless, the long term hightemperature annealing process is responsible for further defect generation, 5 rare earth nanocluster formation, 6 and the diffusion of implanted elements. 7 The reduction of the annealing time of metal-oxide-silicon-based light-emitting diode ͑MOSLED͒ structures is important from the viewpoint of their industrial application as well as the underlying physics. Recently, there have been reports on the importance of short annealing times in the msec range for the formation of ultrashallow junctions in advanced technologies 8 as well as modeling 9 and other advanced applications. 10 In this paper, we report on the advance of using short-pulse high-temperature flash lamp annealing ͑FLA͒ compared to the more conventional annealing techniques ͑furnace annealing, FA and rapid thermal annealing, RTA͒ regarding the formation of more efficient MOS-based light ...

Organo-arsenic Molecular Layers on Silicon for High-Density Doping

“…36 As the junction depth in the MLD process is limited by temperature and duration of anneal, the diffusion of As in Si using the MLD method could be further fine-tuned in terms of shallower junction depths by using emerging spike annealing techniques such as flashlamp annealing and laser annealing. [37][38][39] Application of the MLD Strategy to Nanowire Devices…”

Sensitization of the Blue-green Electroluminescence by Gadolinium Coupled to Si Nanocluster Embedded in a SiO2 Matrix

“…1, b, shows the HRTEM image of Si-nc and Gd clusters obtained from sample B containing 12.5 % of Si and 3 % of Gd. Only Si-ncs with average diameter around 2 nm are visible and they are located in close vicinity of amorphous Gd cluster with diameter of about 4 nm ±1 nm [13]. Since the contrast of Si nanocrystals is relatively low with respect to the surrounding amorphous SiO 2 smaller Si-nc than 2 nm are not distinguishable.…”

Electroluminescence from Er and Yb co-doped silicon dioxide layers: The excitation mechanism

“…Hence, for a non-radiative energy transfer the energy transfer probability is inversely proportional to τ and R, where R depends on the RE concentration and the annealing parameters (time and temperature). The microstructural investigation of the RE implanted oxides subsequently furnace annealed at 900°C for 30 min shows amorphous cluster formation of the rare earth atoms with a mean diameter in the range of 2-5 nm [18]. The clustering process significantly reduces the distance between neighbouring RE atoms and may increase the possibility of the energy transfer from Er 3+ to the Yb 3+ ions.…”